Month: June 2016

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So recently I had to take a week long course of flucloxacillin, all because of my usual summer problem, being bitten by insects. It happens every year and every year I end up covered in little(ish) lumps for a few months. Except this time it didn’t stay like that.

This was the initial lump that I dicovered the first evening while getting ready for bed. This is pretty normal for me so I didn’t much of it at the time.

Overnight it grew and developed…it looks a little shiny because of the hydrocortizone cream I was slapping on it. I got through an entire tube of the stuff in a couple of days. As you can see it started to develop rings and get really interesting looking…

…and it didn’t stop growing either. The day after my initial discovery of the bite I think it tripled in size at least untill it covered close to half my thigh…

This was the point when I decided I should take it to a doctors. It was really hot and swollen and it began to leak fluid quite badly from the central area which had gone oddly thick and hard. Actually getting into a doctors was a bit of an experince and I ended up going to the local out-of-hours clinic who are excellant, very helpful and friendly people, and gave me the prescription for the flucloxacillin.

The flucloxacillin ended up being even worse than the actuall insect bite, infected or not. It was like I’d suddenly developed a really bad cold, I was coughing and grotty feeling and all bunged up, ridiculously tired, and increasingly as the seven days went on I couldn’t eat solid food. My throat was too sore and painful and it was getting more and more difficult to swallow. At one point I even began to have difficulties speaking because my tounge began to be affected.

Should I have gone back to the doctors and explained what was happening, that the only thing I could manage to eat was jelly and yougurt? Maybe, possibly…probably. I think I jus got very fixated on finishing the course of tablets, antibiotics are something you don’t mess around with for very good reasons.

As soon as I finsished the course of tablets my health improved, I’m still coughing a little bit but I’m back on normal food and feeling pretty normal now, and if a doctor tires putting me flucloxacillin again I’m going to refuse it. I just have a nasty suspision that if my body reacted like this, this time, then next time it might be even worse. I don’t know for certain but do I really want to find out?

But this time the weather wasn’t quite so kind. We’d been having a mini-heat wave in the Midlands so I’d been wearing shorts for at least a week which of course meant when I went to pack for my little trip up north I completely mis judged the clothing I needed. In the end I resorted to emergency buying some jeans, spent the rest of the week wearing them too…

…I did think to pack some much more interesting art supplies this time though. I took a pad of pastel paper with me as well as a box of artist quality chalks. They’re so nice (though messy) to use, just a dozen in a range of greys. With this I went up Arthur’s Seat again…

…when I finally got fed up of fixative being blown back into my face I broke out the pens…